Ebola risk very low in stateLITTLE ROCK — We have heard from many of you this week voicing concerns and asking questions about what our state is doing to protect the public from the Ebola virus. We want to pass along the information that has been provided to us from the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH). Dr. Nathanial Smith, the director of ADH, updated a legislative committee Friday morning. As of now there are no active cases of Ebola in Arkansas and the risk is very...

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Arkansas House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Drug take-back campaigns a successLITTLE ROCK — Thanks to participation by law enforcement agencies in all regions of the state, Arkansas has one of the most successful prescription drug take-back campaigns in the country. Since 2010, Arkansas drug prevention and law enforcement teams have collected more than 62 tons of out-of-date prescription drugs turned in by people cleaning out their medicine cabinets. At a joint meeting of the Legislative Task Forces on Substance Abuse P...

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State Capitol Week in ReviewThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

A book of gemsCONWAY — As a Christian, one of the most meaningful things in my life is prayer. This has not always been the case, but over the past several years, and especially the past several months, prayer has become increasingly more important to me. My favorite story regarding prayer is about the lady who was visiting with her pastor about some serious challenges she was facing. After listening to her for a while, the pastor said, “What we need to do ...

Irresponsible 'education'Goddard College’s recent decision to have its students addressed from prison by a convicted cop killer is just one of many unbelievably irresponsible self-indulgences by “educators” in our schools and colleges. Such “educators” teach minorities born with an incredibly valuable windfall gain — American citizenship — that they are victims who have a grievance against people today who have done nothing to them, because of what other people did in...

We're living in depressing timesSome people I know refuse to watch the news or read the papers these days, and who can blame them? The headlines are depressing and no one seems to be in charge. The stock market rises and falls, playing “now you see it, now you don’t” with your 401k, the Ebola virus is on the move, infecting more and more people, while the United States pretends there isn’t anything at all to worry about. ISIS, which is something to worry about, marches stead...

Exercise, routine and lifeWhile new and novel might be exciting, routine and habit can help create a structure and framework for success. From eating breakfast, brushing our teeth or exercising every day, much of our lives are driven by routine. This reliance on routine behavior can startle us when we are driving and find ourselves not at our planned destination, but at our routine destination. In my case, the power of routine was driven home last May, after my family ...

Passing health reform, and a kidney stoneIt was Saturday morning, March 29, and the pain in my lower back was growing more intense. I knew what was happening. It was not my first kidney stone. If you’ve ever had one, you know the drill: the writhing, the fruitless shifting of positions hoping to find relief, the heaving. When I could take the pain no more, I shakily told my wife to wake the kids and drive me to the emergency room. When we arrived, I begged the admittance clerk to hur...

Local or national elections?Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” That may have been true in Tip O’Neill’s day, but some elections are decisively on national issues — and the Congressional elections this year are overwhelmingly national, just as the elections of 1860 were dominated by one national issue, namely slavery. In 1860, some abolitionists split the anti-slavery vote by running their own candidate — who had no chance of winning — in...

Minimum wage proposal on ballot has strong supportProbably the closest to a sure thing among the five issues that will be on Arkansas general election ballots Nov. 4 is “A Proposed Act to Increase the Arkansas Minimum Wage,” listed as Issue No. 5. A people’s initiative sponsored by a group calling itself Give Arkansas a Raise Now, the proposed act is simple and straightforward. It would raise the state’s current minimum wage of $6.25 an hour in three stages — pushing it up to $7.50 on Jan. 1,...

Clinton tries to reframe Arkansas racesCONWAY — It’s the question Democrats in Arkansas have struggled with over the past two election cycles and are trying to answer as they close in on November: How do you counter the anti-Obama sentiment that’s boosted Republicans’ ranks and put them on the verge of taking over the state’s top offices? The answer? Bring in a familiar weapon — the state’s most well-known political son. The series of rallies former President Bill Clinton headlined...

Man pays newspaper years after theftsSome 54 years after stealing several newspaper racks, a U.S. Navy veteran has sent a letter of apology and a check for $200 to The Ledger of Lakeland, Florida. Bernard Schermerhorn said he’s followed the rules for most of his 73 years, but caved to peer pressure as a teenager and went along with a friend’s scheme to steal several racks from The Ledger. In a Sept. 30 letter to the newspaper, Schermerhorn said they took a handful of change and t...

Back to the weird factsI took a detour into history over the past few weeks, but now I’m back with weird trivia you can impress your stupid friends with. Yes, I know there is a third Punic War, but I’m not going into it. That last sentence will only make sense to those who have been following along. All right, here we go. • Don’t swallow your toothpaste. Many toothpastes contain small plastic beads which serve no other purpose than to make the paste look sparkly and...

State’s students boast advancing scoresLITTLE ROCK — Education continues to be our top priority in Arkansas, and we know one of our biggest educational challenges is increasing the number of Arkansans who earn college degrees. Last week, we received positive news reinforcing our long-term progress toward that goal. In the last school year, the number of Arkansas students taking Advanced Placement, or AP, exams increased, as did their overall scores. This is an optimistic sign, beca...

Spending requests under reviewLITTLE ROCK — Legislators began a lengthy and detailed review of all state agency spending requests, in preparation for the regular session that begins in January. Setting a balanced budget for state government every year is the most time-consuming duty of the legislature. Budget hearings begin in October, but legislative review of state spending continues through the session. The Joint Budget Committee meets more frequently than any other com...

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State Capitol Week in ReviewThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Budget hearings continueIn our first week of pre-session budget hearings, we have heard proposals from over 30 state boards. These boards oversee everything from the medical profession to vehicle towing operations. Before hearing from a board or agency director we are given a history of the organization, the most recent audit findings, the number of contracts the board has awarded to minorities and an employment summary. We have provided you access to the same inform...

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Arkansas House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

The intangible value of good willCONWAY — Several years ago I remember hearing the late Earl Nightingale make the statement, “We can’t be much better than we know how to be.” This is so true, but the real benefit comes from asking another question: How do we learn new things? In real life, we learn them in basically three ways: from study, from observation and from experience. During our visit today, I would like to share the benefits of truly understanding, and putting into ...

Issue No. 3 is complex, but has good featuresThe first thing you notice about Issue No. 3, the third proposed constitutional amendment referred by the Arkansas General Assembly to the Nov. 4 general election ballots, is its length. If passed, it would add more than 7,000 words to our 1874 Constitution, which is already too long. Publishing the three proposed amendments in the state’s newspapers, as required by law, takes up two full pages, each three columns wide, in a fairly small type ...

Supreme Court’s nonruling on gay marriageThree points need to be made about Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court not to decide whether the equal protection clause of the Constitution grants people of the same sex the right to marry. Point 1: While the court’s liberal wing probably wanted to accept cases banning same-sex marriage in five states that have been overturned by three different federal appeals courts in recent months, the conservative majority apparently wished to see sta...

Get out and voteEver since the 1976 election, I’ve understood the importance of voter turnout. My father was running for United States Congress in rural Georgia, having lost in 1974. He realized in early 1976 that running as a republican in Georgia, while Jimmy Carter was topping the democratic ticket, was going to be a hard feat to pull off, but confident of his ability to work hard, he trudged forward. Working through the spring, my father felt good about h...

Ebola and ObamaThe Ebola outbreak in West Africa is both a danger in itself and a wake-up call for Americans -- about President Obama, about the institutions of this country and, most important, about ourselves. There was a time when an outbreak of a deadly disease overseas would bring virtually unanimous agreement that our top priority should be to keep it overseas. Yet Barack Obama has refused to bar entry to the United States by people from countries wher...